Dead Soviet satellite and Chinese rocket could crash in space on...

• A dead Soviet satellite and a discarded Chinese missile body have a 10% chance of colliding on Thursday evening, according to LeoLabs, a satellite tracking company.
• It is impossible to intervene to prevent a collision as both objects are dead and cannot be maneuvered.
• Satellite collisions can create huge clouds of dangerous high-speed space debris that can threaten other spacecraft in orbit.
• Tight approaches like this are becoming more common as companies like SpaceX and OneWeb launch fleets of Internet satellites.
• You can find more stories on the Business Insider homepage.

A dead Soviet satellite and a discarded Chinese missile are racing towards each other in space and could crash catastrophically on Thursday.

LeoLabs, a company that uses radar to track satellites and debris in space,

We are monitoring a very high risk conjunction between two large defunct objects in LEO. Multiple data points show miss distance <25m and Pc between 1% and 20%. Combined mass of both objects is ~2,800kg.

Object 1: 19826
Object 2: 36123
TCA: Oct 16 00:56UTC
Event altitude: 991km pic.twitter.com/6yWDx7bziw

— LeoLabs (@LeoLabs_Space) October 13, 2020

2/ Current risk metrics from our most recent CDMs:
Miss distance: 12 meters (+18/-12 meters)
Probability of Collision: >10%, scaled to account for large object sizes
Relative velocity: 14.7 km/s pic.twitter.com/y44QXyhHJK

— LeoLabs (@LeoLabs_Space) October 14, 2020

LeoLabs

That proximity caused LeoLabs to calculate a 10% chance that the objects would collide at 8:56 p.m. ET on Thursday. If so, the explosion would shoot debris in all directions.

A 10% chance might seem small, but NASA routinely moves the International Space Station when the orbiting laboratory has a 0.001% (1 in 100,000) or greater chance of colliding with an object.

Since the Soviet satellite and the Chinese missile no longer exist, no one can get them out of the way. The likelihood of a crash will likely change as they approach, although LeoLabs expects the risk to remain high.

A collision would likely not endanger anyone on Earth, as the satellites are located 991 kilometers above the ground and are supposed to cross over the Weddell Sea of ​​Antarctica. But the debris the crash would cause could cause major problems in space.

“If this turns into a collision, it will likely be thousands to tens of thousands of new debris that will create a headache for any satellite that goes into low-earth or even beyond,” said Dan Ceperley, CEO of LeoLabs, told Business Insider. “It is perhaps a much bigger problem than many people realize.”

Aerospace Corporation experts came up with their own numbers for the two objects on Wednesday, calculating a much lower chance of a collision: only 1 in 250,000 million.

“I don’t want to cast a shadow at all [LeoLabs‘] Process, or its sensors, or anything else, “Ted Muelhaupt, who oversees Aerospace Corporation’s space debris analysis, told Business Insider.” But the sensors, the data we have access to, say we’re pretty confident [the satellites] won’t hit. ”

Roger Thompson, a senior engineering specialist for the company, added, “I expect our numbers and their numbers will likely be much closer together by the end of today or tomorrow morning.”

Space collisions form clouds of dangerous high-speed debris

Almost 130 million pieces of space debris currently surround the earth, from abandoned satellites, broken spacecraft and other missions. This debris moves about ten times as fast as a bullet, which is fast enough to inflict catastrophic damage on vital equipment, no matter how small the pieces are.

Such a hit could kill astronauts on a spaceship.

Collisions between pieces of space debris exacerbate the problem as they break objects into smaller pieces.

“Every time there is a major collision, the LEO changes significantly [low-Earth orbit] Environment, “Ceperley previously told Business Insider.

Two events in 2007 and 2009 increased the amount of large debris in low-earth orbit by about 70%.

The first was a Chinese anti-satellite missile test in which China blew up one of its own weather satellites. Then, two years later, an American spaceship accidentally collided with a Russian one.

“Because of that, there is now a kind of rubble belt,” said Ceperley.

The Soviet satellite and the Chinese missile body together have a mass of almost three tons (2,800 kilograms). Because of its size, the conjunction can create a significant cloud of dangerous debris on Thursday.

Boom satellite connections are becoming more common

This isn’t the first time LeoLabs has made the world aware of the possibility of a high risk satellite connection. In January, the company calculated a possible collision between a dead space telescope and an old US Air Force satellite.

The objects did not crash, but Ceperley said that with both satellites “decommissioned, basically nobody was keeping a close eye on them.”

The U.S. Air Force, which is tracking satellites for the government, did not inform NASA of this potential collision, the space agency told Business Insider at the time.

The warnings from experts about space debris have only become more urgent since that near miss.

“We are seeing a significant increase in the number of conjunctions recently,” Dan Oltrogge, an astrodynamicist who studies orbital debris at Analytical Graphics, Inc., told Business Insider.

Oltrogge uses a software system that has been collecting and evaluating business cycle data for 15 years.

The recent surge in orbit encounters, he added, “appears to be very well attuned to the new large-constellation spacecraft that was launched.”

The major constellations he is referring to are fleets of Internet satellites that companies like SpaceX, Amazon, and OneWeb are planning to launch. In total, the companies plan to launch more than 100,000 satellites by the end of the decade. SpaceX has launched nearly 800 new satellites into orbit since May 2019.

A debris disaster could block our access to space

Should the space debris problem get extreme, a chain of collisions could spiral out of control and surround the earth in an impassable field of debris. This possibility is known as the Kessler Event after Donald J. Kessler, who worked for NASA’s Johnson Space Center and calculated in a 1978 paper that it could take hundreds of years for such debris to move so far away that the Space travel is safe again.

“It’s a long-term effect that spans decades and centuries,” Muelhaupt told Business Insider in January. “Anything that causes a lot of dirt will increase that risk.”

The sheer number of objects in orbit may already have a Kessler-like effect – a risk that Peter Beck, CEO of Rocket Lab, described last week.

“This has a massive impact on the home page,” he told CNN Business, adding that missiles “must try to wind their way up in between [satellite] Constellations. ”

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